Byron, by concealing the causes of his melancholy, and attaching to it a nobler motive, made himself into a Hamlet when he was in reality only a Timon.  What view are we to take of Byron’s intervention in the affairs of Greece?  To fling oneself into a revolutionary movement, to sacrifice money and health, to suffer, to die, is surely an evidence of enthusiasm and sincerity?  Leigh Hunt would have us believe that this, too, was nothing but a pose.  He tells us how the gift of ten thousand pounds to the Greek Revolutionaries, which was publicly announced by Byron’s action, was reduced to a loan of four thousand.  He tells the story of the three gilded helmets, bearing the family motto, “Crede Byron,” which the poet offered to show him, that he had had made for himself and Trelawny and Count Pietro Gamba.  The conclusion is irresistible that there was a large infusion of vanity in the whole scheme, and that Byron had his eye upon the world, here as elsewhere.  The Greek expedition would exhibit him in a chivalrous and romantic light; it might provide him with some excitement, though Leigh Hunt maintains that Byron was physically and morally a coward; and indeed, judging from what one knows of Byron, it is hard to believe that his enthusiasm was an unselfish one, or that he was deeply stirred with patriotic emotions, though he was perhaps swayed by a certain artistic sympathy.

It may be asked, is it not better to put the most generous construction upon Byron’s acts, to believe that his was a nature of high enthusiasms as well as of violent passions, and that the needle fluctuated between the two?

All depends upon the mood in which one approaches a character.  I confess myself that the one thing which seems to me important and interesting is to get at the truth about a man.  In the investigation of character there is nothing to be said for being a partisan and for indulging in special pleading, so as to minimise faults and magnify virtues.  My own belief is that Byron was an essentially worthless character, the prey of impulse, the slave of desire, thirsting for distinction above everything.  There is nothing in his letters or in his recorded speech that would make one think otherwise; his life was devoted to the pursuit of pleasurable excitement, and he cared little what price he paid for it He never seems to me to have admired gentleness or self-restraint or modesty, or to have desired to attain them.  Indeed, I think he gives the lie to all the theories that assert that genius and influence must be based on some essential worthiness and greatness of soul.

XLVIII